Pickup owner learns parking a real hassle

His crime? Parking his yellow Ford Ranger pickup truck on the street in front of his Bucktown home.

Wilson said he parked the pickup on Leavitt Street every night for more than a year without incident.

Then, on Nov. 29, he got a ticket for violating city code 09-64-170(a). In the comments section of the ticket, it simply said "truck, residential."

Convinced there had been a mistake, Wilson appealed the $25 ticket. And lost.

Confused, he wrote What's Your Problem?

"I do the right thing every year and pay for a city sticker," Wilson wrote. "I pay all the extras to do the right thing and have my auto legitimately attached to my Bucktown home."

Well, almost. Before the Problem Solver could make a call on Wilson's behalf, he got a second ticket.

Turns out, in Chicago, you can park a Hummer, a Lincoln Navigator or a Cadillac Escalade on residential streets. But it's illegal to park a pickup truck.

That may come as a surprise to many owners of the 53,036 pickup trucks, as registered by the secretary of state, within Chicago. After all, according to the city, only 717 trucks have been granted the residential parking permits needed to comply with the ordinance.

The ordinance, passed by the City Council in 1990, gives wards the option of allowing pickups to park on their streets. In fact, Wilson's ward, the 32nd, is among those that have been granted an exemption.

But even in the wards that allow pickup parking, the truck owners must get a special $30 parking permit from the city each year. And it isn't easy.

Gregg Cunningham, spokesman for the city clerk's office, said that to get a pickup-truck parking permit, the truck owner's alderman must get a City Council order allowing that specific truck to park on residential streets. The truck owner must also fill out an application that will be signed by the alderman, photograph the front and side of the pickup, and make a copy of the truck's registration card and city vehicle sticker receipt.

All of this must then be submitted to the city clerk--along with the $30.

Once a permit is issued, it is not automatically renewed, meaning the owner must go through the process every year, Cunningham said.

Sound cumbersome?

"I think it's just absurd," Wilson said

His truck, bumper to bumper, measures about 200 inches, roughly 20 inches shorter than an Escalade ESV or a Ford Excursion.

"The streets ... are packed with larger trucks, SUVs and larger passenger cars that are huge in comparison to my truck and take up a far larger space in length," he said.

Wilson said that because he has a pickup, he was charged more for his annual city sticker than most car owners--$150. He figured this was all he needed to park near his house. No one told him, and it's difficult to find on the city's Web site, that a $30 permit was required too.

Other pickup owners apparently are similarly confused.

Last year, the city issued 33,907 tickets for violating code 09-64-170(a), which not only covers the illegal parking of pickups, but also includes buses, recreational vehicles more than 22 feet long and taxis.

On Tuesday, Wilson started the process to get the city's 718th pickup-truck permit.

There is some good news. Because the $30 permit fee is pro-rated, and because the permit is initially issued every June, Wilson will have to pay only $6.25 for a current permit, which will expire this summer. He'll have to start the entire process over again in a couple of months.

As for the two tickets he received, James Reilly, director of the city's Department of Administrative Hearings, said ignorance of the law is not a defense.

So Wilson will pay. In fact, he is required to do so before the pickup-truck parking permit is issued. "What really mystifies me more than anything--in the denial of my appeal, they didn't say, `We deny your appeal, but here's what you have to do to make it right,'" Wilson said.

That, he said, would have prevented him from getting the second ticket: "I think they have an obligation to notify people in my situation."

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THE PROBLEM

Peter Wilson got two $25 tickets for parking his Ford Ranger pickup truck in front of his Bucktown house.

THE SOLUTION

He can't get out of the tickets--but with a lot of effort, he can avoid them in the future.

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